Multiple Race Option in Census May Be More Popular Than
Expected

PRINCETON, N.J. -- A study by Princeton researchers suggests
that many more people are likely to identify with more than one
race in the 2000 census than previously thought. The results of
the count, the first to allow respondents to mark more than one
race, may pose new challenges for making civil rights policies and
tracking social and economic inequality.

Based on a new analysis of data from earlier surveys, Joshua
Goldstein and Ann Morning of the Princeton Office of Population
Research estimate the number of Americans likely to mark multiple
races at some 8 to 18 million, several times greater than previous
estimates by the government. The vast majority of likely multiple
race respondents chose "White" when faced with the traditional
single-response race question, the study found.

The actual results from the census, which was carried out in
April, have not been tallied; initial data regarding race are
expected by April 2001.

In a report in the May 16 online issue of the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, Goldstein and Morning suggest
that such a high degree of multiracial self-identification could
further complicate the difficult issue of developing and
implementing race-based policies, such as fairness-in-lending and
affirmative action programs.

"The advantage of the new system is that it more accurately
reflects how people see themselves. The disadvantage is it shifts
the burden of assigning single-race labels from individuals to the
government," says Goldstein. "Now the government must decide how
to treat multiple responses."

The Office of Management and Budget and Department of Justice,
for example, recently announced that they will allocate mixed-race
individuals back to the minority race, or if there are two or more
minority races, back to the race that makes sense in the
particular enforcement context.

Under the old system, the government was criticized for
pigeonholing people into single-race boxes. Now, says Goldstein,
it may be accused of reinstitutionalizing the 'one-drop rule,' the
segregation-era notion that a person with any amount of minority
ancestry must be a member of that minority.

"Taken together, the issues raised by multiple-race reporting
may fuel criticism not only of race-based policies but also of the
rationale for the collection of racial statistics in the first
place," the paper concludes.

The Princeton researchers estimated that somewhere between 3.1
and 6.6 percent of the US population, some 8 to 18 million people,
are likely to have marked multiple races. That compares to the
government's estimate of one to 1.5 percent, based on pilot tests
of a separate "multiracial" category, which was not ultimately
included in the 2000 census. Goldstein and Morning explain that
the "mark one or more" option is likely to prove more popular the
"multiracial" option because it does not require people to give up
the single-race identities they already have.

To make their estimates, Goldstein and Morning reanalyzed data
from the 1990 census and from an experimental module in the 1995
Current Population Survey. The 1990 census included a traditional
single-race question and an additional question on ancestry that
allowed multiple responses. Goldstein and Morning used a method
developed at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to translate
descriptions of ancestry into classifications of race. The Current
Population Survey asked people who had chosen one race whether
they would have marked additional races if they had had the
choice.

"Although neither of our sources had exactly the same format as
the actual 2000 census question, we were reassured by the fact
that both techniques produced similar estimates," says
Goldstein.

The paper emphasizes that the number of people identified as
multiracial depends not only on how many people actually have
mixed race ancestry, but also on how popular it is to identify
oneself as multiracial. Much of this is unpredictable. "As it
happens, Tiger Woods did not win this year's Master's tournament,
which took place right before the census. If he had, more people
would probably have chosen to mark multiple races," said
Goldstein.